our very first barn dance...

The Arcata Marsh, one of the places I volunteer (and love to visit!), had a barn dance last night as a fundraiser.  They needed people to bring baked goods to sell so naturally I jumped at the chance!  I decided to make chocolate surprise cupcakes and chocolate chip cookies.  I made a half batch of this chocolate cake recipe, which made around 20 cupcakes.  Then I used the filling from this recipe.

 I like this filling because it doesn't have to be piped in, you just put a layer of cake batter, a dollop of filling, and then I do just enough batter to cover the filling.  It cooks with the cupcake so its not gooey, but just a cream cheese flavoring-delicious!

To coat the top of the cupcake, I didn't want to use frosting since these are already rich enough so I just smoothed the top with chocolate ganache (basically just melted chocolate with some cream and butter or shortening) that semi-hardened.  The end result tasted a little like a Hostess cupcake!

I made royal icing flowers to top the cupcakes.  I make the flowers in large batches and then just save the rest for whenever I need them.

I thought they turned out really cute and I just put them in a fold-over baggie with a white ribbon for the bake sale!

Dano came with me to drop the goodies off and we stood around debating if we should actually go in and participate.... We figured we would be the youngest people there and it would be sort of lame.  Well, we were very wrong.  The place was completely packed and it was quite an assortment of kids, young adults, middle agers, and kind of just a smattering of older folks.  The place was so lively and everyone was dancing, laughing, having a great time! 

Needless to say, we had a lot of fun and just might keep our eye out for the next one ;)

Champagne Cupcakes

Need I say more?







Haha!  So, I decided to make champagne cupcakes after being told by a couple people how amazing they are.  I used this recipe and really didn't make any changes besides using a pastry bag to fill them instead of the technique she uses.  Next time I think I would use a better quality champagne...I dont like to splurge on ingredients until I've made a recipe at least once.  They are really light and a little tart but I think that is why so many people liked them!  I took them to book club last night (with a slightly nicer bottle of Brut champagne to drink with) and everyone loved them! 

One perk of making these was drinking champagne while baking.... I mean, you can't exactly save it!

I was nervous about making the pastry cream because I've never made it before and get really nervous about undercooked eggs (especially when serving to others).  But it turned out really smooth and I felt like it had been on the stove long enough that nothing bad could have survived. 

Filling the cupcakes was sort of hard because I didn't know how much to put in so I went on the safe side and had a lot left over but.... they were still delicious!

Tomorrow I offered to bring baked goods to the Arcata Marsh Barn Dance so I've been starting some recipes today and will finish them tomorrow.  I'll update you tomorrow on that!